Where We Live? Looking for safe ground 2/3

In the second part of Where we live? Looking for safe ground, we have invited artists and theorists coming from Kiev in Ukraine, Berlin and Jerusalem to discuss issues concerning public spaces, cultural memory, social belonging vs. exclusion, the physical space and the commons. This will happen through talks, presentations of art works and art practices and research in the urban space.

Art and reality check by Vira Baldyniuk [UA]

The war and Russian occupation affects political and social life in Ukraine in the worst ways. In this situation, the agenda of culture and art is full of challenges. As never before an artist cannot stay politically neutral. One can observe an opposition between (post)liberal and conservative views, left and right, „patriotic” and „betrayal” discourse in media and culture. How can art answer to all these extremes?

Vira Baldyniuk is the Ukrainian journalist,editor, literature researcher and critic, writer. She is the editor in chief of an online magazine about contemporary culture“Korydor”. She also teaches a course on cultural criticism and journalism at the National Pedagogical Dragomanov University in Kyiv. Her professional interests include new media, art in public space, participatory art, art criticism, cultural policy, and self-organized initiatives.

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Cultural codes by Vova Vorotniov [UA]

Visual artist Vova Vorotniov from Kiev, Ukraine will follow with a presentation of his art practice. He works in public spaces with cultural codes, moving from the graffiti and subculture graphics towards conceptual art and arte-povera. Gradually he has expanded his horizon to exploring communication mechanisms of modernity. Vova Vorotniov will stay in Gellerup / Aarhus for a short periode of time where he will explore social and visual aspects of the city and make the result of his research visible in the urban space.

Vova Vorotniov is an artist that lives and works in Kiev. His recent projects include exhibitions in Ukraine, Poland and Netherlands

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Howling Houses & Screeching Tires by Ella Ziegler [D]

Ella Ziegler is the current artist in residency at Sigrids Stue in Gellerup/Aarhus. In Gellerup, both social/living conditions and architectural structures are under huge changes due to a major social and physical revitalization plan going on in the neighbourhood under the motto: „from a disadvantaged living area to an attractive neighbourhood. With a starting point in the social and political context of the district, Ella Ziegler will investigate the history and identity of the place, the social narratives and their affiliations.

Ella Ziegler is an artist and lecturer based in Berlin, Germany

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Eternal Sukkah

Artist's presentation and exhibition opening by Diego Rotman [IS], artist and member of the Sala-Manca Group. The Sala-Manca Group is a group of independent Jerusalem-based artists that work in different fields: performance, video, installation and new media since 2000. Sala-Manca’s projects and works deal with poetics of translation (cultural, social and relating to the media). They operate in the social and political field and work with textual, urban and net contexts as well as with tensions between low tech and high tech aesthetics.

Diego Rotman will present and exhibit „Eternal Sukkah”. The project tells about an illegal shanty structure from the Jahalin Bedouin – a tribe who currently lives in the Judean Desert. The artists purchased, dismantled, and reassembled it as a Jewish Sukkah, a temporary hut constructed for use during a week-long Jewish festival Sukkot. In this new form, it was presented at the Jerusalem Hansen House for Art, Design and Technology in 2014.

Diego Rotman initiated the Sala-Manca Group together with Lea Mauas. The group is based in Jerusalem.

Recommendation: https://kunsten.nu/artguide/calendar/room-improved-futures-where-we-live-looking-safe-ground-23/